The time was 4:13pm.

Someone stood up from their seat and confronted Kai and Akane.

'You guys know how Kai ran a birthday party for Akane yesterday? He was definitely plotting against us. They manipulated us into giving them our points. They definitely knew about this exam.'

He was a large, quite muscular boy. He had a point, the birthday party yesterday was quite obviously trying to extort points from us. I managed to figure this out a day earlier due to noticing that Akane was the same girl who was holding the note that morning.

'Yamada is right! I spent almost 10,000 points yesterday at that birthday party. They're definitely selfish bastards who are trying to get us expelled to save themselves.'

Now that this had been released, it was going to be a lot more difficult for Kai and Akane to gain supporters. However, it didn't look as if they were fazed at all, like they had planned this all out already.

'We should have another preliminary vote right now! Everyone who wants the second package raise their hands.' Exclaimed Yamada.

This time one after another, hands began raising—coming to a total of eleven. Akane tried to call for a vote for the first option however Kai stopped her from doing so by putting his arm in front of her. He began bringing forth his own arguments.

'First of all, the birthday party was a complete coincidence. There was no way for us to know that there would be an exam on this. Secondly, the students who have the least amount of points should have to take responsibility for their rash spending. Choosing the second option will only damage the financial statuses of every student in the class, do you want to take the fall for all the students who are too immature to make good decisions?'

The class went silent once again after hearing Kai's argument.

'You bitch! Are you saying that we should be expelled?'

'I'm only saying that those who have poor spending habits should take responsibility for themselves.'

'That's completely unfair, we had no idea something like this would happen, if we picked package two we could all pass and stay in this school, are you saying that we're worth less than a few points?!'

'Even considering we do end up picking the second package, what about all the students who have less than 20000 points?'

After hearing this, Yuuto decided to speak up.

'It is possible that other class such as class B or A may lend us points, they have consequences for holding too many points, it wouldn't be too difficult to request loans from them.'

'Yeah, that's true!' Shouted Yamada.

There was another period of silence as everyone considered what they just heard.

I decided to use this opportunity to look at the Cooperative Reliability scores of some of the students. It took a while to scroll through all of them one by one however they provided some useful insight.

- Kai had a rank of: 378/411 (F)

- Akane had a rank of: 142/411 (C+)

- Yamada had a rank of: 299/411 (E)

- Yuuto had a rank of: 28/411 (A)

I decided that I was going to make a deal with Yuuto.

I pulled out my phone and began discretely texting him.

-

[Yuuto]

[What is it?]

[How many points do you have? I want to make a deal with you]

[I have 26050 points]

[I'll loan you 20000 points for the exam if you pick package one]

[But if you do that you'll be low on points won't you? You only have 38901 points]

[You don't have to worry about that]

[I find it hard to believe that you would lend me that many points]

[I'll transfer them to you right now.]

[Okay then, but are you sure you want to?]

[Yes]

I opened up my bank account to finish the transfer.

-

Your Account

Current Points: 18,901

Owed: 20,000

Owing: 0

-

Kai spoke up once again.

'You claim that you can cooperate with the upper classes, however that's not certain is it? Let me explain, there's a chance one of the upper classes might choose the first package. In that case, that class will be fighting tooth and nail to get every point they possibly can. If that happens, our weak E class won't have any chance to gain loans.'

'What are you talking about?' Yamada couldn't understanding what Kai was saying.

'The first package guarantees that five students will be expelled, regardless of how many points you may have. Even if you have 100,000 points, it's still possible that you may be expelled if you have the least amount of points in your class.'

'Yeah so?'

'So, every student in the upper classes would fight for as many points as possible. Since they have more capital than us, they can just offer better deals. For example, they may offer a 10,000 point loan and repay the lender 20,000 points. There's no chance we would be able to compete with that because we don't have that many points to start off with.'

It took a little while for Kai to explain, however, after a few moments, Yamada and the others seemed to understand.

'But why would any of the upper classes choose the first package?'

'There are many possible reasons. Their classes could be disjunct and there may be trying to cull off the weak. Or they may just be trying to minimise the point expenditure and gain favour and reputation within the class. We don't know what they may be thinking right now.'

'I still think that that's unlikely.' Insisted Yamada.

'All I'm saying is that picking the second option includes unnecessary risk.'

There was some chatter around the room.

'Let's have another preliminary vote, hands up.'

The vote resulted in 11 votes for package one and 10 votes for package two. Kai's reasoning was pretty decent, however, some of the students who were just over the 20,000 point mark still preferred the second package. However, Yuuto's vote was enough to establish majority for package one.

'Is everyone ready to do the official vote?'

'No way! If we do the official vote now we'll just lose.' Exclaimed the boy next to Yamada.

'Nendo, what do you suggest we do then?' Asked Kai.

'I don't know! But I refuse to participate in something that will just cause me to be expelled.'

'We could just run the official vote now and you can choose not to vote.'

'No! That's even worse...'

It appeared that there was no outcome that was ideal for Nendo.

It would appear that the vote was all but decided. However, there was a hidden third option which I wanted to achieve.

Now that Nendo and Yamada have noticed this sinking ship, it would be very easy to convince them of my plan. All I needed to do was send one message to them.

**

Kai called for a teacher and announced the official vote.

'Everyone inside this classroom will receive a notification on Preseqta.'

There was a 60 second timer on the voting screen. Once the timer was up, the app was automatically closed and the teacher began speaking again.

'The voting period has ceased. Here is your class' results.'

She pulled up a screen on the television.

-

Results of Class E Balanced Society Vote:

Package One: 10 students

Package Two: 8 students

Did Not Vote: 12 students

~~~

Result: INVALID VOTE

-

'What the hell?' Kai was visibly shocked by the results.

The third option.

To purposefully not vote, you could get a no result. This would result in a 10,000 point fine overall but it was much easier to achieve this result due to condition that 60% of the class must vote for a vote to be valid. However the main consequence of such a result is that any student with less than 45,000 (5,000 point fine + 40,000 point deduction from loan) points would be expelled.

61% was a very specific decimal. Every class only had 30 students. It meant that at least 19 students must vote in order to have the vote be valid.

I received a notification on my bank account.

-

Your Account

Current Points: 48,901

Owed: 260,000

Owing: 120,000

-

It was pretty easy to force this result. I simply messaged Nendo and Yamada. They were the only two who I knew were guaranteed to be very low on points.

[If you abstain from voting, I will lend you 40,000 points each which will allow you to pass the exam. In exchange, you will pay me 30,000 points each every month for the next 4 months.]

It wasn't a very good deal on their side however there was no way they'd decline, otherwise they'd be expelled. This also allows me to gather a large stockpile of points without it becoming obvious.

A few minutes before the final vote, I had communicated with Haruto who alongside one of his Class A classmates each lent me 60,000 points for a total of 120,000 points. They agreed because otherwise they'd have to split their loan between many lower class students as giving them all to one student would cause that student to then face Condition B and lose points. It was also possible that some of the students from lower classes could ask for fees.

I was as safe option for them as they could do the exchange discretely without fees and without the risk of me being expelled. I told them that I'd repay them 20,000 points each month for the next three months.

This ultimately was a good result for me.

However, Kai and Akane were less than content.